THE THEATRES.
A new piece, called La Famille Poisson, recently produced at the St. James's Theatre, does great credit both to the author, M. Samson, who has shown himself an elegant writer and an acute discrimivator of character, and to M. Perlet, who in the principal part realizes the writer's conception with the utmost refinement. The subject of the play is taken from the history of the French drama. It is a remarkable fact, that the conven- tional character of Crispin, which appears so often in the early French comedies, and which was invented by Raymond Poisson, an actor of the time of Louis the Fourteenth, was after the retirement of the inventor transmitted to his son, and afterwards to his grandson. In M. Samson's piece, the three Crisping, father, son, and grandson, are all introduced; and at the end of the drama all appear in the characteristic black dress of the part. The plot, which relates to the difficulties the youngest Poisson had to encounter before he could make a dabat in Paris, is excessively slight; but the author has taken the greatest pains in working out the cha- racter of the eldest Poisson. He has left the stage, and has the horror of a devotee for the profession of his youth; but he has yet sufficient vanity left to fire up with indignation if he thinks there is a chance of the glory de- parting from the Poisson family, or to break out with delight if he hears a word in praise of his comedies,—for be it remembered, he was an author as well as an actor. The struggle of artistic vanity against bigotry, which ends in the complete triumph of the former, is represented with a force and a minuteness that are by no means too universal in modern plays, French or English.
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